A great yarn—my agent kept hearing that, Tony B had told her. But no ending, not without finding Betty Ann Price and/or the money. How am I supposed to find Betty Ann when the cops couldn’t?
A question that had seemed unassailably rhetorical at the time. Now Ivy thought it had an answer.
She drove north, across the border, was back in Montreal in the early afternoon. A cold wind blew; people on the street wore winter clothing. She found St. Catherine, parked across the street from Les Girls.
Time passed. Ivy’s strategy, cribbed from the movies, was to wait until Mandrell appeared and then follow him to wherever he lived. It had worked for Nick Nolte, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, Batman, countless others; it didn’t work for her. Lots of men came out of Les Girls, but not Mandrell. Maybe he wouldn’t leave for hours; maybe he went out the back; maybe he wasn’t there at all.
After way too long the obvious suddenly occurred to her. She called information. No McCords listed at all. Why would she expect that he’d have a listed number in the first place? But he had to live somewhere. Any cop—or even a reporter—would already be taking the next step. Did she know any cops? Only one, really, Ferdie Gagnon, and asking his advice was out of the question. Reporters? No. Except…except for Tony B.
“Sure I remember you,” said Tony B. “Writing teacher from Dannemora. Gold Dust case. Nice lunch.”
“I enjoyed it, too.”
“And now”—he burped, but softly—“you’ve got a follow-up question?”
“Yeah,” Ivy said. “Let’s say you…you have a character that needs to find the address of this other character and all you—she—has is his name and the city. For the other character, if you see what I mean.”
There was a pause. Then Tony B said, “Are you telling me you tracked down Frank Mandrell?”
“Frank Mandrell?” Ivy said, hitting—to her ear—nothing but false notes.
“Brains behind the robbery,” Tony B said. “Disappeared into witness protection.”
And then disappeared from that, too. But all Ivy said was, “Oh, him. Of course not. How would I do a thing like that?”
Another silence. “Maybe you got some in with the feds.”
“The head of the FBI’s my best buddy,” said Ivy. “But I decided to call you about this address thing instead.”
Tony B laughed. “Touché,” he said. “But you can’t be too careful in cases like this.”
“Cases like what?”
“Where there’s a scramble for pub rights,” Tony B said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Something wrong with your memory?” said Tony B. “Maybe you should start taking notes.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s already a manuscript, like I told you,” Tony B said. “Three hundred and nineteen fucking pages, even if there is no ending. This story is mine.”
“Absolutely,” Ivy said. “I’ll never write a word about it. My interest is in Harrow’s fiction.”
“Say again?” said Tony B. “You faded out there.”
“I’ll never write a word about it.”
“We’re clear on that?”
“One hundred percent,” Ivy said.
“Deal,” said Tony B. “As for this request of yours, there are several ways to go about it.”
Ivy chose the one that involved posing as a buyer in a real-estate office, sitting in a conference room with a well-dressed woman and lots of literature, including municipal tax rolls. Not long after, she was driving through a fancy suburb in the western part of the city. She parked in front of the big stone house at 458 Rue Rançon, registered to Jake and Marie McCord.
And now? Ivy wasn’t sure. She could walk up and knock on the door—but what if Frank Mandrell opened up? Or she could just sit and wait. Ivy sat and waited. A gust of wind raised some dead leaves from a lawn and blew them in the gutter. They settled in a little heap; then another gust sprang up and they were on the move again. Ivy’s mind wandered over to The Surveyor. The surveyor’s world didn’t add up. The surveyor would have to find out—and find out painfully—that she didn’t add up either. Maybe the surveyor’s whole history wasn’t what she’d thought or been told.
Where to begin? Professor Smallian believed that more stories failed from beginning in the wrong place than for any other reason. Ivy mulled it over for a while, began to wonder about the actual instruments of surveying. Learning all that was going to be important, the nuts and bolts needed to be—
Ivy had sunk so deeply into all this that she almost didn’t notice the garage door at 458 opening up. A big black Mercedes glided out, Frank Mandrell at the wheel, his long blond hair so strange with that dark face. Ivy shrank back in her seat, a useless tactic. Mandrell drove right by her, five feet away. All he had to do was glance over; but he was on his cell phone and saw nothing. The Mercedes turned a corner, flashed briefly between two houses on the cross street, and vanished.
Ivy took one last look at Betty Ann’s image on that deck in Claudette’s photo and got out of the car. She walked up the flagstone path and banged the knocker—a brass replica of the Venus de Milo—hard against the door.
Footsteps on the other side. Ivy’s heart started beating, fast and light, like a tiny drum. Betty Ann Price had met Mandrell at the boat ramp, taken the money, money they’d used to finance Les Girls and make Frank’s dream come true. Once he was lost to witness protection, what was there to keep them from being together? Nothing: therefore probably part of the reason he’d gone missing. Some details were still fuzzy, but the core story made sense. Betty Ann was going to open that door. And then what? Ivy wasn’t exactly sure, but it ended with Harrow as a free man.
The door opened.
Not Betty Ann.
Betty Ann would be thirty by now. This woman was about fifteen years older than that, had sharp features, a headful of graying curls, and a cigarette dangling from her mouth.
“Oui?” she said.
“Marie McCord?” said Ivy.
“Yes?” Marie McCord squinted at Ivy through drifting smoke. The tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, the tilt of her head: Ivy read suspicion in every detail. “If you’re selling something I’m not interested.”
Ivy shook her head. “I’m looking for Betty Ann.”
“Betty Ann?” said Marie; Ivy was watching very closely: the name meant nothing to her.
“Betty Ann Price,” Ivy said, still unwilling to let the idea go.
Marie shrugged. “You have the wrong house.”
“I—”
Marie closed the door.
Ivy backed away.
No Betty Ann.
For a moment or two, Ivy felt light-headed. Had Betty Ann and Mandrell parted somewhere along the way, maybe splitting the money? Ivy didn’t know: the Gold Dust story refused to add up. But some big things were still certain: Mandrell had an affair with Betty Ann; he set Harrow up; he made his strip-club dream come true; Harrow was innocent. Ivy drove to the airport, turned in the car, flew back to New York.
The city had changed. Ivy couldn’t say exactly how. The quality of the light, the density of the shadows, the expressions on faces, even faces she knew: all just a little bit different, as though some supernatural being had tried to replicate New York and come very close. Unsettlingly close; and she’d always felt settled in New York. Falling asleep took a long time, and the sleep that finally came was troubled.
Ivy awoke, made coffee, cleaned her apartment, showered, and took a long walk that ended at Verlaine’s. Pretty busy for a Monday: Bruce was working the bar, along with a slim black woman, very good-looking, whom Ivy had never seen. Ivy put her hair in a ponytail and stepped behind the bar, next to Bruce.
He was pouring a glass of red, that Chilean Pinot he insisted was wrongly unheralded, didn’t look at her.
“Ivy?” he said. “What’s up?”
“Here to work my shift,” Ivy said.
“Shift?” he said, sliding the Pinot to a customer who gave it a cautious sniff.
“Monday, eleven till seven,” Ivy said. Now he turned to her. She didn’t like the look in his eye. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” she said.
The other bartender was watching her, too.
“A few minutes late?” Bruce said.
Ivy checked her watch. “It’s three minutes after.”
“I’ll try some of that,” said another customer.
Bruce ignored him. “Are you stoned on something?” he said.
“Stoned?” said Ivy. “Of course not.”
“It’s a joke, then?” Bruce said. “An attempt at humor?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Pinot,” said the customer. “From Chile.”
“It’s Tuesday,” Bruce said. “Don’t pretend this is news.”
“Tuesday?” Ivy said. Had she slept round the clock?
“It’s not even original,” Bruce said. “Another girl tried the same ploy on me a few years back.”
Now everyone at the bar was watching, eyes going back and forth like tennis fans. Ivy lowered her voice. “This isn’t a ploy, Bruce. I really must have—”
Bruce took a corkscrew to another bottle of the Chilean Pinot. “Crossed the line,” he said. “I bent over backward. You know it and I know it.” His hands were shaking. “Your check’s in the office.”
Ivy backed away. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, red-faced, distorted, almost a stranger. Pinot slopped over the side of the glass Bruce was filling.
Bruce’s office, originally a closet, stood next to the kitchen. The new cook was yelling in a language Ivy didn’t recognize. She went into the office. Dragan was there.
“For real?” he said. “The boss is firing you?”
“For real,” Ivy said, taking her check out of the mail slot. Her name tape was already gone.
“My heart is sick,” said Dragan.
“Don’t worry,” Ivy said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Dragan gazed at her. “Cool,” he said. “This is the famous way American woman handles setback—I have seen on Oprah.” Ivy noticed a thick, brown-paper-wrapped package under one of Dragan’s arms. “In this event,” he went on, “maybe it would be possible you are still perusing my novel.”
Ivy gazed back at him, saw he was growing a fuzzy little mustache. She remembered a lesson on the feudal system, maybe from third grade. The illustration showed the king at the top, commanding the nobles, and ended with the peasant at the bottom, and the caption: The peasant has no one to kick but his dog.
“Happy to,” Ivy said.
“You will peruse?”
“Just write your number on the package.”
Dragan wrote down his number, ended with an exclamation point. “Good luck in all your endeavoring,” he said. “Past, present, and future.”
She took the package. Like Bruce’s, her hands were a little shaky, too.
Ivy went home. She opened a file called Surveyor Notes and started trying to bend all the ideas she’d had so far into the shape of a story. It went well for a while; then she remembered Danny’s offer to fund The Surveyor so she could quit Verlaine’s. She’d ended up with neither, Danny and her job both now gone. Her mind went useless. It wasn’t so much that the flow dried up, more like it became intractable, as though water had turned to wood.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, putting her head in her hands. At that moment, she saw that her message light was blinking.
Danny? Ivy kind of hoped it was: an unforgivable moment of weakness.
But it wasn’t Danny.
“Sergeant Tocco here. Good to go on that hospital visit. Get back to me if you’re still interested.”
Ivy called him before the playback ended.
“Hey,” said Sergeant Tocco. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” said Ivy. “And you?”
“No complaints,” said Sergeant Tocco. “Had a few snowflakes this morning.”
“Already?”
“It’s coming,” he said. “Still interested in the hospital thing?”
“Yes,” said Ivy. “When would be a good time?”
“Whenever you like, just about. Give me a heads-up, that’s all.”
“How long’s he going to be there?” Ivy said.
“No telling,” said Sergeant Tocco. “He’s picked up some sort of infection, maybe on account of how it was a toothbrush that did it.”
Ivy found she was squeezing the phone very tight. “Is it serious?”
“No idea,” said Sergeant Tocco. “But the doc said he was okay for visiting.”
“Is today all right?” Ivy said.
“Today?” said Sergeant Tocco. Pause: Ivy could picture his heavy features growing a little heavier while he thought. “Don’t see why not,” he said.
She gathered her folder and packed an overnight bag, just in case. Just in case what? Ivy wasn’t sure. She hurried down the five flights, out onto the street, headed for the garage where Bruce had that little deal for parking the Saab—something else that would have to change. And soon, as soon as she got back. Ivy had walked only half a block, was wondering how she could even afford to keep the Saab now, when she noticed a car going by. What attracted her eye wasn’t the car so much as the driver. He was possibly the biggest man she’d ever seen, certainly the thickest, seemed to fill most of the car; the window was open and his huge bare arm hung outside like a prizewinning ham.
The car pulled over, right in front of her place. The big man got out, slow and deliberate. A second man who’d been blocked from view emerged on the other side. A round little man with gray hair in a Nero cut: Vic Mandrell. They glanced up at Ivy’s building and moved toward the door.
She hurried away.